The full story...

Shorten to face trade union Royal Commission

Julie Doyle reported this story on Wednesday, July 8, 2015 08:07:46

ASHLEY HALL: The Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will today face his most crucial test since taking the Labor leadership.

Mr Shorten will appear before the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, where he'll be grilled about his time at the helm of the Australian Workers Union.

For a leader under pressure there's much riding on his performance today.

Bill Shorten maintains he's always put the interests of workers first but the Government has continued to challenge that position.

From Canberra, Julie Doyle prepared this report into the politics at play.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Now this is becoming an open sore for Bill Shorten. He needs to address it.

TONY ABBOTT: Course Mr Shorten has questions to answer and it's just not good enough for him to stonewall.

BILL SHORTEN: Well I'm not going to give a running commentary on the Royal Commission and the various pieces of evidence which are presented.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: What the Australian people want to know is what he knew and when.

BILL SHORTEN: I've spent my whole working life standing up for workers.

JULIE DOYLE: When he takes the witness stand later this morning, Bill Shorten will be the third Labor leader to appear before a royal commission since the Coalition took office.

Former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard appeared before separate commissions after they retired from political life.

So today is different.

For a man who wants to be the next prime minister, the political consequences could be telling.

Speaking in the lead-up to today's hearing, Bill Shorten maintained he was happy to have his past as a union leader put under the microscope.

BILL SHORTEN: I always said that the Royal Commission set up by Tony Abbott to investigate unions would be an opportunity for people to settle scores. I always expected that my record would be examined.

JULIE DOYLE: But the Government has kept up the attack.

There are allegations that as a union leader Bill Shorten negotiated deals with employers that left workers worse off and gave rise to payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars to his union, allowing the Government to raise questions about Bill Shorten's motives, and to exploit the link between Labor and the union movement - along the way trying to damage an Opposition Leader whose public approval rating is already low.

The Prime Minister has applied the pressure right up until today.

TONY ABBOTT: It's really a matter for the Leader of the Opposition to explain and plainly there is some explaining that's needed. There are a lot of questions that have been raised by the testimony that's already been given in the royal commission.

The Abbott Government established this royal commission early last year and its final report is due by the end of December.

From day one, Labor has described it as an expensive taxpayer-funded attempt to smear the Government's political opponents.

Opposition frontbencher Brendan O'Connor says it's designed to tear down Mr Shorten.

BRENDAN O'CONNOR: Bill, for almost his entire working life, has been defending working people. So I'm very confident that what will come out of today - and beyond for that matter - is someone who has put his heart and soul into defending and advancing the interests of many, many millions of Australian workers.

JULIE DOYLE: Isn't it legitimate though to scrutinise some of these arrangements that happened when Bill Shorten was at the helm of the Australian Workers Union?

BRENDAN O'CONNOR: Well just isn't it sort of deja vu all over again? I mean, fair dinkum. What's happening here is the Liberal Party - who of course hate all unions in this country, have an enmity towards unions - are spending millions and millions of taxpayers' dollars to attack them.

ASHLEY HALL: Labor frontbencher Brendan O'Connor ending that report from Julie Doyle.